Russia, 1905-07: Revolution As A Moment of Truth

395 Pages·1986·4.854 MB·English

by  Teodor Shanin

RUSSIA, 1905-07: REVOLUTION AS A MOMENT OF TRUTH
By the same author
PEASANTS AND PEASANT SOCIETIES
THE AWKWARD CLASS
THE RULES OF THE GAME: Models in Scholarly Thought
INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE
“DEVELOPING SOCIETIES” (with H. Alavi)
LATE MARX AND THE RUSSIAN ROAD:
Marx and the Peripheries of Capitalism
RUSSIA AS A “DEVELOPING SOCIETY”
The Roots of Otherness:
Russia’s Turn of Century, Volume 1
RUSSIA, 1905-07
REVOLUTION AS A MOMENT
OF TRUTH
Teodor Shanin
The Roots of Otherness: Russia’s Turn
of Century
Volume 2
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
First published in the United Kingdom by The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Published in the United States by Yale University Press
Copyright © 1986 Teodor Shanin.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole
or in part, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the
public press), without written permission from
the publishers.
Printed in Great Britain.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 85-40906
International Standard Book Number: 0-300-03661-2 (cloth)
0-300-03661-0 (paper)
To a Russian friend, who knows . . .
‘Master and Margarita’, p. 135
It was our childhood
And adolescence
Of our teachers
Boris Pasternak: 1905

Contents
List of Tables, Figures and Maps ix
Acknowledgements x
Preface: The Roots of Otherness xi
Introduction: Revolution as a Moment of Truth xv
1 A REVOLUTION COMES TO BOIL 1
A. The ‘neither . . . nor . . revolution 1
B. A revolutionary situation: masses as actors 7
C. A revolutionary situation: leaders and ‘grey peasant
workers’ 12
D. The forces of order and the force of anger 27
2 REVOLUTION FROM BELOW: DOWN WITH
AUTOCRACY! 34
A. A tale of a revolution: January 1905 to April 1906 34
B. A tale of a revolution: April 1906 to the end of 1907 50
C. The ‘internal enemies of Russia’: revolution as a
composition of forces 58
3 REVOLUTION FROM BELOW: LAND AND
LIBERTY! 79
A. The Jacquery 79
B. The peasant rule 99
C. The peasant dream 120
4 THE PEASANT WAR 1905-07: WHO LED WHOM? 138
A. Question and context 138
B. The revolution’s contemporaries: Right and Left 140
C. The post-revolutionaries: the drift of the interpretation 151
D. Peasant wars and the ‘inflections of the human mind’ 164
Addendum Peasant and workers’ struggles in 1905-07:
the statistical patterns 174
vii
viii Contents
5 HISTORY TEACHES: LEARNING, UNLEARNING,
NON-LEARNING 184
A. Moments of truth 184
B. Collective memories, plebeian wrath, historical futures 189
C. Retreat into progress: the KDs and Mensheviks 209
D. Conservative militants and militant Conservatives: the
SRs and the ‘United Nobility’ 223
6 HISTORY TEACHES: THE FRONTIERS OF
POLITICAL IMAGINATION 236
A. Stolypin and revolution from above 236
B. Trotsky and the permanent revolution 251
C. Zhordaniya and the National Front 261
D. Lenin: revolutions and the post-revolutionary state 279
POSTSCRIPT: MATTERS OF CHOICE 306
Notes and References 317
Index of Names 367
Index of Subjects 373
List of Tables, Figures and
Maps
Tables
1.1 Crime against the state: by occupation 26
4.1 Dubrovskii’s comparison of striking workers and
agrarian disturbances (1905-07) (monthly) 175
4.2 Comparison of striking workers and agrarian
disturbances, 1905-07 (seasonal) 176
4.3 Comparison of striking workers and agrarian
disturbances, 1905-07 (using a ‘moving average’) 177
4.4 Uezds in which agrarian disturbances were reported 178
6.1 The historical Lenin: a taxonomy 281
Figures
4.1 Dubrovskii’s comparison of striking workers and
agrarian disturbances, 1905-07 (monthly) 180
4.2 Comparison of striking workers and agrarian
disturbances, 1905-07 (seasonal) 181
4.3 Comparison of striking workers and agrarian
disturbances, 1905-07 (using a moving average) 182
4.4 The general rhythm of agrarian disturbances, 1905-07 183
Maps
1 Strike intensity and the establishment of the Soviets:
European Russia and Transcaucasia, 1905 72
2 The ‘Agrarian Disturbances’ and peasant political action,
1905-07 86
3 Transcaucasia, 1917-21 270
ix
Acknowledgements
As usual, my intellectual debts are too extensive to be fully
acknowledged. I shall name only those which are particularly
significant and consistent. For their encouragement, advice and
comment, I would like to thank Hamza Alavi, Perry Anderson,
Philip Corrigan, Boguslav Galeski, Iris Gillespie, Leopold Haimson,
Derek Sayer and Israel Shahak. I owe gratitude to a number of Soviet
scholars - friends whom I shall not name one by one. My work could
not have progressed without effective library back-up for which I owe
particular thanks to Jenny Brine of CREES, Birmingham, Agnesa
Valentinovna Mushkan of TsGIA, Leningrad, and the librarians of
the Wilson Center, Washington. I would also like to thank, for their
consistent and effective technical help, Pauline Brooks, Jarmila
Hickman, Jamie Sutherland, Linda Stares and Ann Cronley. As to
the institutional help, I would like to thank the Wilson Center,
Washington, the British ESRC and my own University of Manchester
for support and indulgence. I owe particular thanks to the British
Academy and especially to Peter Brown and Jenny Lynden of its
staff. The same goes for the other type of institutional back-up - the
Shula and Aelita team, and all the other of my friends who helped by
smiling at me while I scowled.